Jailed rival fights to halt $13bn Abramovich deal

Saturday 1 October 2005 20.24 EDT
First published on Saturday 1 October 2005 20.24 EDT

Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea FC, faces an eleventh-hour challenge to the $13 billion sale of his oil company from jailed fellow Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Lawyers for Khodorkovsky, who is serving an eight-year sentence in Moscow, are planning to take court action in an attempt to stop Abramovich selling his controlling stake in Sibneft to Gazprom, the Russian state-owned energy giant.

Khodorkovsky, the former chief executive of Yukos Oil, will claim that the deal violates a legally-binding agreement between the two tycoons to merge Yukos and Sibneft.

That deal was struck before Khodorkovsky was arrested on fraud charges two years ago. Although the two companies had already begun to integrate, Abramovich withdrew from the deal after the arrest.

As a consequence of the half-completed merger, Yukos still holds a 20 per cent stake in Sibneft. But Khodorkovsky's old company has effectively been confiscated by the Russian government.

Tim Osborne, a director of Menatep, Khodorkovsky's holding company, confirmed that the jailed tycoon would seek ways to challenge the Sibneft-Gazprom deal but expressed doubts about finding justice in the Russian courts.

Khodorkovsky's prosecution is widely perceived to have been politically-motivated and an attempt to appeal against his conviction failed last month.

Abramovich's spokesman said that a legal challenge to the Sibneft sale 'would have no grounds'.